


A Home is Made of Hopes and Dreams

by HyperKid



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb’s Cat Tower, Caleb’s POV, Fluff, Forcible Decorating Committee, Found Family, Humour, Other, a bitch learned better, a bitch thought he could not decorate his own room, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyperKid/pseuds/HyperKid
Summary: A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.Caleb Widogast’s family make sure that he knows the tower is his home too.
Relationships: Background PolyNein, Widojest if you squint - Relationship
Comments: 30
Kudos: 129





	A Home is Made of Hopes and Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> HK: It has been entirely too long since I drowned you all in SOFT!   
> Mollymauk: It fucking has, you’ve been neglectful.   
> HK: Well I’m going to find some way to blame that on you, just give me a minute.   
> Mollymauk: Why don’t you do what I’ve always done? Blame it on Lucien.   
> HK: ... Fair. I’m catching up because apparently I always do that when I’ll be hitting the podcast week hiatus and that fucking accent...   
> Mollymauk: Hey, you said my accent was sexy!   
> HK: It fucking is but I have one aural kryptonite and it is the musical lilt of an Irish accent. I’d push my own sister off a bridge if Matt asked me in that voice.   
> Mollymauk: You’d push your sister off a bridge for fun.   
> HK: Maybe not a tall bridge?   
> Mollymauk: Would you push her off if I asked?   
> HK: Abso-fucking-lutely but that is not the point, the point is I’m distracted from ~existing~ by Matthew Mercer.   
> Mollymauk: Join the club, dear.   
> HK: However, this may be good news for y’all, since I’m likely to have a bunch more snippets as I get caught up! 
> 
> WARNINGS!! Mild Caleb Widogast self loathing 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing and no one and make no money off writing or I would promptly stop.

The first thing he notices are pillows. Caleb’s not the first back to his room whenever they have the mansion; it’s a plain, boring place, and he prefers the rest of the tower when he can. 

So when he walks in and sees his plain couch covered in six beautiful pillows he Knows he put in Jester’s room, his first thought is to check under the bed for a sneaky tiefling. 

No one there. 

He considers wishing them away, but... she may want to come and visit later. May want him to read her some of the stories from their other book. But the night drags on and he goes to bed without interruption. Finds both of his bed pillows, flat sacks of feathers, have been replaced with hers too. 

They smell of her mother’s lavender oil when he lays his head on them, but to Caleb they only smell of Jester. 

***

They’re conspiring against him. 

The next time he conjures the mansion, he comes to bed to find that his writing desk, simple and wooden, now has a stack of fine paper and about half the inks he’d put in Beauregard’s room. His stiff wooden chair is covered in cushions, and looking to the couch he finds the same six pillows. 

Well. 

That was a message. And he can’t help the slight smile as he shakes his head. He will have to remember which these are for the next time he conjures the mansion. 

His friends want him to be comfortable in the home he made. Even knowing how little he deserves it, he cannot deny them. Going through to bed, he finds Jester’s pillows once again and a beautiful fire lily on his bedside table in a vase from Yasha’s room. 

Without closing the distance he can already smell the catmint that surrounds it. Is briefly, deeply relieved he hasn’t included bat guano anywhere in the mansion but his own components. It would be just like Beau. 

A pot of hot water he knows he made for Caduceus sits beside it, a small selection of teas on the table but with a single cup already made. He imagines it must be steeped to perfection, the teabag sat beside it on the plate but the spell he put in the cups keeping the water hot. 

He doesn’t think the tea is catmint, but there’s a distinct minty hint combining with the scent of fresh herbs. Remembers Caduceus telling him a mint tea is good to settle stomachs and help someone relax. 

He could add a lock to his door. 

He assumed there’d be an unspoken understanding not to invade each others’ sanctums, but... well, he’d assumed they were fucking housebroken. That they weren’t all the invasive, born-in-a-barn, gremlin bastards he loved so dearly. 

Caleb Widogast had never had siblings. Not even with Astrid and Eadwulf. They had been dignified, respectful, eager to prove themselves and proud as cats. Never had separate rooms or private spaces to share. 

He thought he valued privacy when they had the Xhorhaus. But that was so, so long ago, and he was a different man now. In some ways an even more feral gremlin bastard man than he’d been on the road with Nott so long ago. 

And he likes it. Almost likes himself, or at least who he is with the Nein. 

It takes climbing into bed for him to realize his rough sheets have been replaced by the soft cotton from Nott’s spare bed. Luckily the silk on Jester’s pillows is made fresh every time, so the tear stains won’t last. 

*** 

Thinking back, he really should have realized that a few inks, pillows, odds and ends were entirely too subtle for the Mighty Nein. Yet when Jester casually mentions she wants doorways wide enough to dance through, wide enough for Yasha to sweep Beau off her feet without clonking her head, well. 

It’s the very least extravagance Caleb Widogast can give. So the next night every doorway in the mansion is massive, almost as massive as the fit Beau pitches while the rest of them giggle. Caleb can just sit back and grin for his part, content to have already played his role in the joke. 

He’d left all of their changes this time, and restocked their rooms with the same things in duplicate just so they wouldn’t be put out. He’s taken their lesson to heart, he thinks, and made his rooms a little less sparse. A little more comfortable with their gifts. 

He’s even granted himself a copy of his collection of cat figurines from the Xhorhaus. 

Surely that will be enough. 

So when he comes upstairs and opens his bedroom and is greeted by Fjord’s massive bed, covered in pillows from every single one of their rooms until it makes Jester’s collection look small... he just doesn’t have words. 

Glancing sharply around he half expects to find them there, peeking from around the corner like schoolchildren. Watching for his reaction. 

But there’s no one there. 

He can’t imagine how the fuck they wrestled the entire bed out and floated it up and into his room without alerting any of the cats. Or where the hell they put his original bed, for that matter. It was a small thing, nondescript with a straw mattress, similar to the one he’d had in Trostenwold so long ago. 

Fuck, it’d probably fit under the elaborate four poster he gave Fjord. They might not have moved it at all. 

Climbing into bed, he knows exactly where Jester disappeared to as soon as they arrived, and “went to bed” the second she swallowed her last bite of dinner. 

It’s not quite the same as the painting he put on the ceiling above her bed. Not just one scene, and a little sparse on the detail because she must have rushed to cover the whole space. It’s the Mighty Nein asleep in the dome he’d made for them on Rumblecusp, with the walls showing moments of their adventures. 

He can just about pick out Fjord being menaced by various Polymorphed turtles. 

He spends so long staring at the ceiling he’s almost too short on sleep to recover his spells, laying in the middle of a mountain of pillows that smell like all of his friends. 

*** 

The next time he casts the mansion he takes Jester’s elbow just before she enters, letting the others get a little way ahead. There’s something fucking knowing in those innocent lilac eyes that makes him stumble over his words. 

“I... ah... I have... I have added some more paints in my room. If. You. If you wanted... to finish it,” he manages, unable to meet her gaze. This feels far too much like asking her for something he doesn’t deserve, but... 

Maybe he’s allowed to want to. 

He crafted this beautiful tower specifically for the Mighty Nein, every piece tailored personally to their liking. His gift to them. 

Maybe it’s right that they design his room in return. 

And a broad, fanged smile spreads across Jester’s face but she just nods happily, rising on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. 

“Maybe you can read me the other book while I paint?” She offers with just a hint of a giggle, and Caleb has to smile back. 

“I would like that very much.” 

**Author's Note:**

> HK: I feel a need for another cuddle puddle soon, and there’s a couple choice options tantalizing me and I ~just might~ invert my Rewards system to give Caleb a sexy punishment for fucking with the necromancy emerald and failing >.> who knows!


End file.
